by David Connor
“I hope so. I hope our kid is gay.”
I laughed. “You do?”
“I know how to talk about being gay. I don’t know shit about dealing with girly feelings and pregnancy scares.”
“Are girly feelings any different than boy-y feelings?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t never been a girl.”
“Fair enough. We should go to sleep. Except Mr. Bauer said he’d call when they get home—so we’d know they got there safely.”
“If I wake up, I’ll answer.”
“Naw. I’ll get it.” I set the phone on my side of the bed.
“Whoever wakes up first...” Aidan reached across me and put it in the little nook in the headboard.
As it turned out, I took the call. Lauren and her father arrived home by around 4 in the morning. How the rest of the story would turn out, only time would tell. Aidan and I slept in until around 9 the next morning. He snuck in while I was in the shower, and we messed around a little bit, until we recalled one guest still remained within our dwelling. We dried off quickly, waited a bit for our erections to go soft—which took a lot longer since we were both so hyper-focused on them—and then we dressed and went downstairs. Toby was sitting in our most uncomfortable chair, probably as penance, where he texted away, probably to Lauren.
“We’re going to hit the mall between snowstorms for some last minute Christmas shopping,” I told him. “The roads look clear for now. You want to come?”
“We’re Jewish.”
“Jewish people go to the mall all the time.” I smiled.
“Hanukkah’s over.”
“Then that’s a no?”
“Maybe,” he said, looking up at me for the first time.
“What’s new?” Aidan asked him.
“I told him what you told me.”
“I hope he don’t put it on blast to the whole school,” Toby said.
“Highly unlikely,” Aidan soothed. “I don’t hang with many high schoolers these days.” He entered the kitchen for fuel.
“Lauren told her father it ain’t my kid,” Toby said. “She was afraid he was going to beat me up.”
“What about Herschel?”
“She doesn’t care if he hits him.”
“Yikes.”
“That was a pretty upright thing you were going to do,” Aidan said, returning with a mug in each hand. “Raising someone else’s kid as your own—or at least saying you would. I doubt it would have come to that.”
“You don’t think?” Toby asked.
Aidan offered him a mug, and then passed one to me. I knew neither was for him. Aidan still only drank cold tea and coffee.
“Did you really see yourself keeping a secret like that for nine months, let alone eighteen years? Dude…”
“Probably not,” Toby admitted.
“So what now?” Aidan dropped the question and then disappeared from the room.
“What’s he mean?” Toby asked me.
“I think he’s wondering who ends up with who and what happens to the baby.”
“There is no baby.”
“Huh?”
“Lauren got her period this morning.”
“Oh.” My stomach dropped—like that feeling you get on a roller coaster. I guess I’d let myself get caught up in the fantasy of raising her… or him. Only a few hours in and I had picked out nursery furniture and a college, all without even having convinced Aidan it was a good idea, or talking to the mother—or there being a baby.
“False alarm,” Toby said.
I was still a little too quiet, apparently, as Aidan and I met up in Target after shopping separately for one another. “What’s wrong?” he asked me.
“Nothing. Let’s go find an angel.”
I was standing in the bay clothes aisle, so he kind of figured what it was.
“Okay. So, Target probably isn’t the place to talk about this, but I was thinking las night we should set a date.”
I thought about Aidan’s stocking message. “Set a date?”
“To start our family. I turn thirty next year. In ten months, to be exact. I’ll still be in school, so let’s say thirty two. Thirty two is when we’ll plan on starting a family.”
I had to smile. He had us still together in three years. Yeah, I figured we would be. We’d said as much. We’d committed forever, but doubt crept in often, just as a result of my anxiety. We’d been living together a year. If we’d thought we’d known one another completely before that—the good and the bad, the laundry on the floor and the eating peanut butter with our fingers—man, were we wrong. Aidan did more to annoy me in the first few days cohabitating than I even thought possible, and it went both ways. Still, I had never once thought about leaving him. I loved him, and if he’d thought of leaving me, he’d resisted the urge.
“I’m younger than you are,” I said.
“You just love to work that in anytime you can, huh?”
He knew I did. “I guess three years isn’t that far off. Our first year went by pretty quickly. And we’ll have time for a ton of discussions between now and then about how we’re going to raise him… or her… or them. I’ve always thought about twins.”
“Brianna and Rex. One of each.”
He’d given the idea some consideration. That was pretty cool. “I’d thought maybe Caleb and Amanda,” I said, “after your grams and grampy.”
“Aww. No wonder I love you.”
“I’m glad you’re agreeable to the idea. I was afraid you were going to say no—to the whole thing.”
“I’m still unsure, to be honest. But I’m hopeful that once we settle better into our careers, kids will just fit in somehow.”
We headed over to the Christmas decoration aisle holding hands.
“Faggots!”
“Delinquent,” Aidan yelled back.
“Fuck you!”
“Not on a bet.”
“Aidan… ignore them.” They were a group of five. I didn’t recognize them as students at my school, but they very well could have been. There was another Biology teacher, so I didn’t have every kid in the district.
“So much for better,” Aidan said.
“There will always be some.” That realization made me sad. The fact that Kyle Bauer probably was picked on every day—and I didn’t know it—that did too. I decided right then to check into a gay support group at our school. I wanted to be the safe room. I knew there were stickers teachers put on their doors to invite a student facing any sort of trouble or bullying to just walk in any time. I wanted my classroom to be one of those. Every room should be, and that suddenly made me wonder who I was working with. Did I have peers like the parents Toby spoke of, ones who thought I shouldn’t even be a teacher, ones who called me “faggot” behind my back? It was possible. “Let’s just go pick out some Christmas stuff. Our first official one together, we need something to mark it.” I made a show of kissing his hand in front of the haters as we walked right past them, over to the seasonal department. I immediately spotted a beautiful golden angel all done in satin and lace. One of the topics Aidan and I would have to discuss along the way would be religion. I still went to church most Sundays. I planned on going Christmas Eve, even though I hadn’t gone last year. I hadn’t even asked Aidan if he was coming with me. I was a bit of a wuss. I wanted that angel. I picked her up.
“It’s beautiful,” Aidan said.
I figured we would get it, until another one fell from the shelf. “It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen,” I said. “We have to get it.”
“Eww. Why?”
They were caroling angels—five of them, like the thugs that had just mouthed off to us, except all in green and black scales—because they were also frogs.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just got a chill… a feeling.”
“So… instead of a Shelf Elf, now Grampy is a frog?”
“No.” I thought a moment. “Maybe. Did you see how it just leapt out at us?”
“Someone probably
shoved it from the other side.”
“I can’t explain it,” I said. “It has to come home with us. Here. Hold it.”
Aidan made a face, but he took it. I could see his expression change.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re getting the stupid thing.”
I put the gold one back and we headed off.
“Five… you, your parents, Grams and Grampy?”
“I guess. My dad isn’t a spirit, though. He’s alive… and will be over Christmas day, remember?”
“Good point. Should we get a bulb for the star while we’re here?”
“Naw. I like the surprise element. Will it be on? Won’t it?”
We picked up a few more things together, and managed to keep our purchases from other stores hidden as we walked out to Aidan’s ten year old Jeep. “We gotta hit the grocery store on the way home,” he said. “I need baking supplies.” His plan was to spend the entire afternoon in the kitchen. In fact, it was quite possible we would pull an all-nighter. “It’s going to be packed. Between Christmas and the storm, people are going to be freaking out.”
“There are two of us,” I reminded him. “We’ll divide and conquer. I’ll start in dairy, you start in produce, and we’ll meet somewhere around pet supplies and paper goods.”
Aidan fiddled with the car stereo a little while before we pulled out. Surprisingly, he ended up putting on a station playing very traditional holiday tunes. Karen Carpenter was singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I closed my eyes. I loved her voice, and I loved that Aidan’s grandfather had encouraged him to enjoy music from many generations. The light was still red. There were six cars ahead of us and just as many behind, waiting to pull out of the mall and onto the street. “Come on.” Aidan was impatient. The moment the light turned green, his foot was on the gas pedal, even before the car in front of us had moved. I reached for the dashboard to hold on.
“Would you stop that?”
“What?”
“The passenger seat driving. You want to drive?”
“No. I wasn’t… I didn’t say anything.”
It was another thing we’d fought over before. Creeping ever so slightly toward the light and also the rear end of the car in front of us, “You don’t need to hold on. I’m not going to hit ’em,” Aidan told me.
“I know.” I really wasn’t so sure. “Sorry. The snow… so many people… it has me a little on edge.”
“Me too.” He turned to me and smiled. “I hate traffic.”
I’d learned that about him over the past twelve months. We’d driven home separately from Florida last year, so going together the previous spring had been quite an experience—a profane one. The curse words had flown rather freely.
“It’s okay.”
We finally made it to the light—just as it turned red again.
“Fuck!” Aidan smacked the wheel. “I should just go.”
A car pulled up alongside us to turn right. The window came down right across from me and a cup and its contents hit mine.
“Motherfuckers!” Again, that came from Aidan.
“I think it’s the kids from Target.”
Aidan rolled down my window with the button on his door. “Watch your shit, you stupid fucks!”
“Aidan…” I put a hand on his forearm. “Let it go.”
“Let it go, faggot. Listen to your ugly pussy woman.”
“You better shut your fucking mouth, punk.” Aidan was leaning across me. “He’s twice the man you are, piece of shit.”
“Come on. The light’s green.”
The kids pulled out to the right. Aidan moved ahead and then cut right at a speed far too fast for the snow-covered roads. When I grabbed for the dashboard that time, I had good reason. The gas pedal must have been to the floorboard and the Jeep fishtailed. We straightened out somewhere in the center lane, with the kids who’d harassed us all the way to the right.
“Aidan!”
He didn’t answer me.”
“Aidan!”
“What?”
“Cut it out.” I was close to tears, like the pussy the homophobes had accused me of being. “This is stupid.”
He slowed down almost immediately.
“You’re going to throw everything away you’ve worked for lately, for what?”
“Because they need to be taught a lesson.”
“How? You going to beat up a bunch of teenagers? Then what? You spend Christmas in jail?”
“Fuckers.”
“I agree, but…” I shrugged. His eyes were on the road, not me, but I didn’t know what else to say. Maybe Aidan didn’t either, because he was quiet a while. He took the next left to get us back in the right direction, heading for the A&P.
“I’m glad you were here,” he finally said. “They deserved to get their asses kicked by someone bigger than their mouths… not me, though.”
“I’m glad I was here too.”
“I hated them saying that shit about you.”
“Thanks… for defending my honor. It doesn’t matter what they think. I’m honestly way beyond letting that kind of thing bother me.”
“You are?”
“Aren’t you?”
“If someone says it about me, yeah. Honestly, I was thinking about that girl’s brother… the one that’s not pregnant. What was his name?”
“Lauren…” Aidan never had been good with names. “And her brother, Kyle.”
“What if they said something like that to him… or any kid… especially one who didn’t have a good support system at home. What then?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Hopefully he’d have someone like his sister to show him he’s awesome no matter what.”
“Or a good teacher, maybe. Someone responsible and levelheaded.”
“I was thinking about that. I can’t wait to go back in January to start something at our school—or find out if we have it, a club or something for kids to feel good about being themselves.”
We headed to the grocery store, and then home with twelve bags. We picked up two big prime ribs Aidan had ordered ahead, twenty pounds of potatoes, and one of almost every vegetable in the fresh fruits and veggies aisle. He’d also grabbed enough flour, sugar, and decorations for about six billion cookies. We finally finished up last of the 2014 Christmas cookies long about Easter. At least we thought we had. We’d found one more bag around the Fourth of July. They’d still tasted pretty good, so we’d crushed them up over ice cream with a delicious fruit and chocolate sauce Aidan had whipped up from virtually nothing. As he prepped to start his first batch for the current year, I stood in the middle of the living room with the ugly-ass frog angel quintet, trying to decide where to put them. I rearranged some stuff on top of the mantel and set it right in the center.
“You good with that I asked the sky?”
“Works for me.”
My heart stopped.
3
“Kip?”
I was staring at the frogs, willing them to talk again. I turned to the Shelf Elf, and then the star.
“Hey.”
I finally looked toward Aidan, standing in the kitchen doorway in nothing but the striped boxer briefs I’d bought him last Christmas. They were faded and a bit loose now. Good thing Santa Claus was bringing some new ones.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just looking around—enjoying the decorations.”
“That’s where that’s going?” He pointed to the frog singers.
“It has to.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Nothing came to me. “Because we have to have it where we can see it when we’re sitting on the couch.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“You know… in case it does something.”
“Gotcha.”
“Or says something,” I wanted to add. “What did you need?”
“Help.” He was behind me, at mine, grinding against it.
“Remember last year when we made stollen and almost had sex?”
“Mmm. I do.”
“I’m making cherry tarts for everyone and I could use a sous-chef to pit the fruit.”
“Should I take my clothes off?”
Aidan answered by pulling down my dark denim jeans. Because he hadn’t unfastened them, my undershorts went down too. “Oops. If we didn’t have so much to do…”
“We’ll be most of the way ready when it’s all done if we’re undressed.” I pulled up my undies and kicked off my shoes to slip off the pants. “Brr.” I shivered when Aidan went for my sweater and undershirt.
“It’s way hotter in the kitchen,” he informed me.
And it was. A little verbal teasing and a lot of closeness while we baked and made candies went beyond foreplay, actually entering into the realm of edging. We’d iced about half the cookies we’d made when Aidan picked up the piping bag and aimed it at me.
“Squirt!” He said it and did it, depositing a glob of white icing in the middle of my chest. Baking was over. It was time to move onto to other things Aidan was really good at. “Want some more?” he asked.
“You know I do.”
He put the wide part of the tool at the fly of his boxer briefs and nodded for me to get down on my knees. He didn’t have to ask twice—or with actual words. I parted the fabric opening and took the tip of him and the frosting bag in my mouth at the same time. “Mmm.”
“Me or the icing?”
“Both.”
The banter was cliché, predictable, and inane, but the sensation and the make-up sex from our little spat in the car, a very brief argument for a pretty serious lack in judgement I still thought, was nothing less than phenomenal. We were both covered in sticky sugary frosting by the time Aidan entered me. We’d sucked it off each other’s hard dicks and filled each other’s asses like cannoli, eating it out until we both had white Santa beards, gooey globs sticking to the whiskers we’d been too lazy to tend to that morning. I expected a bruise the next day where my gut was pounding against the corner of the kitchen counter, but right then I didn’t care. The heat of Aidan inside me, the thickness and force, I didn’t care about anything other than that. The contracting of his gut as his hairiness prickled my bare back, the change in the rhythm of his breaths coming from his open mouth at the nape of my neck, they told me he was about to come. He must have been up on tiptoe in order to reach, our height difference more than slight. I took his hand and put it on my tacky, no doubt tasty erection. It was soon wet from my precum, and then a full eruption that came with Aidan’s deep inside me.